Bandwidth Speed

Just completed a wireless setup. One would think I would a happy camper, but I am getting some very unfavorable results. Could this be the cable company way of stopping neighborhood networks or internet sharing.

I am using a hi-gain antenna to see my friends wireless network. He is about 300 feet from my house. My signal strength is now 80% and my link quality is 75% to 80%. We are using 11Mbps equipment. When I checked my download bandwidth speed using his cable modem through his wireless network I am seeing a drop of 1 Mbps in speed as compared to my cable modem speed of 2 Mbps. He is seeing the normal 2Mbps speed on his laptop less than 30 feet away. His the distance the problem?

I expected some decrease in speed, but not half of my normal speed through my cable modem. Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

 

How about the speed of file transfers from PC to PC (no internet stuff involved)?

 

Newt, don't know about file transfer speed. Haven't gotten around to that yet.

What I am seeing doesn't really make sense to me. I intentionally reduced by signal from 80% to 46% to see what affect it would have on my bandwidth download speed. Would you believe that I saw no change at all. I found this to be very strange. I went from an excellent status to a low status and my bandwidth speed remained the same, at about 1Mbps. My bandwidth speed seems to be limited to about half of my available speed of 2Mbps for some reason.

On the other hand my friend brought his laptop over and his signal dropped less than half using his adapter card in the laptop. When He checked his download speed it was .5Mbps. At his home his speed is around 2Mbps with about 95% signal. In his case his signal drop produced a bandwidth drop as well, but not in my case. I would think with the excellent signal that I have I would see top speed. I don't get it. Apparently something else is holding my speed down.

 

Copying a couple of large files across and checking on the speed would at least tell you if the issue is ISP/Internet/Cable related or is something intrinsic to your wireless network.

 

I get your point, but I already know it's something intrinsic to the wireless network. As I said early when I wish from the wireless access to my direct cable modem access my speed averages about 2Mbps. When my friends checks his speed at his home using the same wireless network that's about 20 feet away he also gets an average of 2Mbps, which is what our broadband is rated.

The only difference between our accessing the wireless network is distance. I am about 250 feet away and he is about 25 feet away from the access point. He gets a 95% signal and I get 80%. Remember I already mentioned that even when I cut my signal strength in half I can still get close to a 1Mbps speed rate. When my friend cuts his signal by half walking to my house away from the access point, his house, his speed drops more than half.

I have ask the brains on the broadband reports forum, but their suggest deals primarily around signal strength. One did mention having my friend to change channel, which we plan to do.

I just think with a constant 80% signal strength and a constant 80% link quality that I should be doing better than 1Mbps. But no matter what my strength and quality are I can't seem get any better than half of my maximum 2Mbps.

 

Sorry but what you are seeing is something I've read about a little but don't understand at all. I would have thought that wireless was either working or not. Apparently I'm missing something here because it does seem that distance/signal strength/gremlins can leave a connection working but more slowly than you'd think it should.

I'd love to read a report from someone who hung a good packet sniffer on one of these 'slower than it should be' links to see if there was garbage being introduced or huge numbers of dropped packets, or something of that nature.

 

Are you all using the same equipment, e.g. same maunfacturer?

I have heard that differing manufacturers cards dont always work well with each other even though they maybe the same wireless capability.

I assume you are all using the same wireless capability e.g. 802.11b?

Regards
tel33

 

We are using the same wireless capability e.g. 802.11b. My friend is using a wireless D-Link Router. I am using a USB Hawking hi-gain antenna. As I have indicated before I am getting an excellent signal and link to his Network. It is picture perfect, but for some strange reason my bandwidth speed is half of what it could be. We are both currently connected to the same cable company (Charter) at 2Mbps. This speed in our area is pretty consistent. I think the distance is a key to my low speed, but I don't know why. It appears although I have and excellent connection to his network I will suffer a 50% reduction in bandwidth speed. It may very well be a technical issue, but since I don't know anyone with a similar setup I have no way to compare.

My friend does see a bandwidth speed drop when he comes to my front door with his laptop. This would certainly say that his bandwidth speed drop goes along with his signal drop. But with my hi-gain antenna I have about the same signal at my house 250 feet away that he has in his living room less than 25 feet away. As I mentioned before I did a little experiment and didn't see any bandwidth speed drop at all.

Like I said it is very strange, but maybe normal for my 250 feet setup. I just don't know.

 

Have you reset duplex settings to accommodate the router?

*Most all Cable Modems should be set to 10mb half duplex mode but DSL connections could be any depending on your equipment and ISP. If you are using a router then you should set your duplex mode to 100mb full duplex.

 

I think you may have it noahdfear, as you say some routers need the setting up for full duplex, half duplex etc. Good suggestion.

 

I saw in a new thread that you have this working now. Good to hear. Mind posting back with your fix?

 

Sorry about that. It really wasn't broke. What I discovered was that the bandwidth checker (bandwidth Meter) I was using was to conservative. When I used Bandwidth Place to check it I got over 2Mbps. So nothing really fixed it, I just used another speed tester. I now have a 100% signal and link quality. My only problem now is linking my second PC to my friends network using a proxy. I got the internet working for the second PC, but I can't get the email working. Can't see anything that I'm doing wrong. I using AnalogX.

 

I am almost certain that ur isp will not wot you are doin with ur connection, they dont no the difference between 1 and 20 computers sharing the same connection. i think that ur problem lies with the distance, i have a 8 computer network setup (wired) using a plane old 10/100 switch and a 600k cable internet connection and i have no problem with the connection speeds, so yeah the distance is more then likly the cause of ur problems. i would try installing a booster to boost the connection to around 2-5Gig that will certainly slove the problems